Keyboard Woodworking — Part 3— First attempt
Now that the tools are somewhat ready, it’s time to work on that piece of olive wood. First I need some work space, so I found two left over 8 feet long, 5 inch wide and heigh beams from previous home renovation and make two make shift horse.
And on trying to cut the wood into dimension, I incorrectly used a super fine Japanese dozuki(cross-cut) saw to do a rip cut and broke a few tooth off. Barely a few week old, I had to order a replacement blade. Luckily, also different brand, it was interchangeable with Suizan which is common on Amazon.
Looking at the wood, it looks like this could use a few bow tie to stop the wood from further splitting. I had only watch Blacktail Studio’s Cameron done those bowties with router.
I brought out a few hard woods from Bell Forest sample pack to see which one would work well with olive. Osage Orange looks good!
After cutting the bow tie and chisel out the space, I realized it’s not easy to chisel or cut anything straight. That was a first hard realization, as simple as cutting a straight line, I couldn’t do it. It felt pretty exciting. When I tried to fit the bow tie, I had to cut a slanted angle at the bottom so it’ll go in easier.
With bow tie securing the piece, I started to plane the back of the case to remove the saw mark. I used the cheap plane for such rough job. This is pretty tiring but also fulfilling. You can see the progress through sweats and wood shaving.
Then started to draw outline of keyboard onto the wood. I’m using the beams as working area.
Outlining area to fit the keyboard.
After the outline, I tried many method to get it to depth.
But I had issue with work place moving while I plane or chisel. And clamping and unclamping is getting tiring. Also, it would be nice to have a surface that can perform other tasks like clamping and cutting.
After some repeated struggles, it was clear I need some way to hold the work piece better. And the search of better work top began.
To be continued…
